“I suppose it could change but it’s unlikely.”
“Why? They have the house for the whole week. It could be anytime that week.”
“No, you’ll see, when you read the transcript, that I covered this exact thing with DeLeon. I wondered how he could be so sure of the exact time and that it wouldn’t be changed. I masked this by saying I was concerned that the deal had already gone off depriving him of a legal benefit. He said it would never be changed because Escalera is a very superstitious man who loves the middle.”
“Middle?”
“Yeah, all middles.”
“Middles of what?”
“Middle of anything.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means, for example, that if you gave him the choice between the numbers one, two, and three he will always choose two because it is the middle number. In high school he played nose tackle in a 3-4 and in college, when he was no longer comparatively big enough to play the line, he switched to middle linebacker in a 4-3. If he’s in a car’s back seat he sits on the middle hump. If he’s playing checkers—”
“I get the picture but shouldn’t this then be on a Thursday?”
“No because the couple flies on a Sunday and returns on a Saturday. That means that the house will be completely empty for five days, Monday through Friday with Wednesday being the middle day. Escalera would never change the day.”
“Why three then?”
“His lucky number. I told you, superstitious.”
“Of course it could still be changed due to circumstances beyond Escalera’s control.”
“I suppose but so what? It should be pretty easy to tell on that date if something is going down or not. Remember we know about the plane tickets. The house should be empty. If we detect any activity whatsoever, especially a car driving into the garage at three a.m., then we know it’s on. If nothing happens, then we turn around and go home with nothing lost.”
“True. Now let’s say it happens precisely as DeLeon said it would. What has already happened and what will happen?”
“Can we get some more bread with that too pal? Thanks.”
My main course was in front of me now, steaming and calling. Beautiful breasts of free-range-on-weekends chicken pounded out then stuffed with fresh spinach and a touch of prosciutto in a sweet Marsala wine and mushroom sauce with caramelized onions.
“Well?”
“Well what?”
“Are you going to answer my question?”
“Our food’s here,” he said his upturned palms cradling his dish in visual support.
“Yeah?”
“I certainly can’t eat and talk at the same time.”
“Try.”
“How can you eat and listen at the same time?”
“I’ll manage.”
“Fine, it’s all in the packet. DeLeon got out the same day I talked to him. I’m not sure if it was a necessary prerequisite or not, but about thirty-six hours later Freddy’s shipment arrived in the U.S. The shipment represents everything Freddy has and signals his exit from the drug trade. He used his brother’s old line to get the stuff in, with none of them knowing there’s anything particularly special about this shipment regarding size or anything else. Remember Freddy has dismantled his brother’s entire crew both in the D.R. and the little he had here. So what he did is have the stuff delivered to his nephew’s house in the U.S. The nephew’s not connected in any way and the extent of his involvement is just keeping the stuff in his house for a week or so. I know what you’re thinking but nobody, not DeLeon, not Escalera, not anyone, knows who this guy is or where he lives.”
“Well he’s Freddy’s nephew right?”
“Yeah but that’s a dead end, trust me. Anyway there the stuff will stay until the mule goes and gets it that day.”
“That day?”
“No, you’re right. Not necessarily that day since that would imply that the current stash location is within a day’s driving distance of 410 and although that is almost certainly the case, since nobody knows where the stuff currently is then no one can say that with complete confidence.”
“What’s your guess?”
“I think the stuff ’s nearby in the outskirts of the city but we won’t be able to determine where.”
“Who’s the mule?”
“No one knows except Freddy. The only thing Escalera and DeLeon know is that at 3:00 on the dot someone, acting alone, will drive a car into the garage at 410.”
“What car?”
“Her own car, connected to no one.”
“A Nova.”
“Right but it could be any woman who owns a Nova in the whole damn country and that’s assuming she’s the registered owner, and I can’t think of a way to narrow it down much more than that.”
“Me either, yet.”
“Anyway she takes all the risk. She picks up an antique Tansu trunk at the house of the nephew. A locked trunk to which she does not have the key. The key to the trunk was previously mailed to Escalera from Freddy. In return Escalera used a mailing service to mail Freddy a garage door opener that opens the garage to 410 and a key. Presumably, Freddy then turned around and mailed the opener to his mule here. Next Wednesday morning the mule will drive the Nova, with the locked Tansu in the trunk of the car, to 410. She will use the garage door opener to open the door and enter the garage at exactly 3:00 a.m. She cannot be late. If at 3:01 she’s still not there, Escalera and his minions will assume something is wrong, they will deactivate the garage door opener, and she will be denied entry. She cannot be early either for the same reason. In the garage will be two of Escalera’s guys. Everything I know about them, which isn’t much, is in the packet. They will pop the trunk to the car, take the chest and one of them will bring it into the house which connects to the garage from the kitchen. Using the key they will open the chest then weigh and test the stuff inside. The mule will stay in the garage with one of the guys. If everything is cool, a locked red duffel bag, which Freddy was previously given the key to, will be placed in the trunk of the car. If the third floor watchers give the go ahead in terms of police presence, the lady will get in her car and drive off, the transaction complete. Bottom line is about eight men in that house and the mule. The mule is required to come alone but we can’t unequivocally foreclose the possibility that others will be lingering in the vicinity when she leaves ready to take possession of the bag. And that’s the deal in a nutshell, though there are of course a lot of details that you need to learn.”
“So.”
“So I want that red bag. More specifically, I want the fifteen to twenty million dollars in untraceable cash that’s going to be in that bag. Cash that cannot be reported stolen. In my mind that bag already belongs to me, I just need to go and pick it up. I want that bag.”
“Me too, I guess, but how do we get it?”
“That is the question.”
“How are you leaning?”
“The money will be inside 410 some time before 3:00. The mule only complicates things. We can go in and get the bag before she even shows up.”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“What happens to the woman when she shows up?”
“What concern is that of ours?”
“No.”
“We’ll talk about it, in your packet is a description of the kind of guns we’ll need.”
“No.”
“It’s in there, trust me, you just haven’t looked closely enough.”
“No, I mean no guns.”
“What do you mean no guns? What the hell are you talking about?”
“I’m talking about neither of us having guns on that day.”
“You crazy? You know the eight people I was telling you about? I hate to break the news to you but they will have guns. And they will be jumpy and tense because they know security sucks.”
“Or they’ll be complacent, thinking there must be no danger if security is so lax.”
“That’
s quite a gamble, don’t you think?”
“No, because even if you’re right and they’re super-jumpy I still won’t bring a gun or even go with you if you bring a gun.”
“You’re serious.”
“Of course.”
“We need guns.”
“I won’t do it.”
“We’ll be killed.”
“Doubt it, who would kill me?”
“Who? Someone who has a gun and isn’t keen on you taking their millions.”
“I can live with that risk Dane. After all we’re the ones creating this contentious situation right? It seems only right that we should take the brunt of the risk.”
“What exactly is your objection to the guns? You prefer a grave risk of death? I personally don’t fear death in the slightest, but the overwhelmingly majority do so I’m rather curious.”
“Guns are for the stupid Dane. A well-trained monkey can go in and fire a gun, big fucking deal.”
“You propose we just ask nicely for the money?”
“Violence is the language of the simple. You initially proposed that we formulate a plan using our intellects and execute it using our wills, but now you propose we go in with guns like a couple of high-school-dropout-liquor-store-robbers. That’s you’re idea of perfection? If you think we will fail without guns, if you think we’ll be killed, then let’s not do it. You wanted me to do it remember? Not the other way around. Did you think I would just be a passenger on your train to criminality? I bring my own beliefs about what constitutes a proper plan. That’s why you wanted me remember?”
“Is there anything else I should know about?”
“The chest.”
“Whose chest?”
“The Tansu with the drugs in it.”
“What about it?”
“I want it.”
“I see. Greed. How do you propose we turn it into cash while still paying extreme attention to avoiding apprehension as you have mandated?”
“I don’t want to turn it into cash I want to destroy it.”
“Destroy it? Why’s that?”
“You’re insane if you think I’m going to be even peripherally responsible for some two-month-old girl being left unattended and gasping around in search of a tit in some ratty apartment while her mother goes out looking for crack.”
“I see. But you’re not willing to bring a gun into that house lest one of these people, who does actively contribute to the creation of gasping, unattended babies, gets hurt.”
“Right.”
“Do I have it all now?”
“More or less.”
“Great, let’s review. You’re willing to come along on the heist but only if we go into an apartment where an extremely high-level drug deal is about to go down, completely unarmed, at precisely the moment the deal is to be consummated, so that the mule, who we don’t know, can’t be blamed, and take about fifteen million dollars and drugs worth seven times that from these undoubtedly heavily-armed fellows. We then destroy the drugs, in the process ensuring we’ve made mortal enemies of numerous violent people both here and in Santo Domingo. Do I present the general picture?”
“Yes.”
“I like it.”
Dessert was an espresso—is there a greater beverage?—which I willingly imbibed despite the fact it never failed to later create in me an inordinate anxiety, and a piece of cheesecake. The cheesecake was perfect, not that shitty New York crap, but Italian ricotta cheesecake. Light and grainy, barely sweet with the edges nice and brown at just the right thickness and topped with a sweet but natural tasting strawberry sauce swirl. Bliss.
“That was a brilliant meal my good man,” said Dane addressing the serious waiter. “I can’t speak for my tight-lipped friend here but I think everything was highly delicious. You work in proximity to a near-genius kitchen and by extension I’m prepared to label you, whether warranted or not, a man of extraordinary culinary gifts.”
“Oh good, I’m glad you likeh. You come again no?”
“If I came any more I’d have to don an apron.”
“Hah, hah, hah! And you signor?”
“I also thought everything was superb, thank you.”
“Let’s go,” said Dane a bit later.
“Yeah,” I said and we split.
Outside, in the cold, was all the reality you could bear. I still had to go to Cymbeline to hear Soldera’s fate. Dane said he was going home to think so we parted ways somewhat abruptly. I looked up at the sky without real cause. It was true that the temperatures had unmistakably belonged to winter for quite some time but now the sky was finally reflecting true winter as well. And not early festive winter or dwindling late-stage winter either. This was exact midpoint winter, in appearance and fact, topped by a perfectly white firmament. Perfectly and uniformly White in a way that made me think Star Trek et alii had it all wrong when they portrayed the vast outer reaches of space as occasionally-interrupted black. It wasn’t black out there, it was white, and this was being revealed to me all at once without intervening gradations. You could climb high as you might and look all around but all you would see is missing color. Absence in every direction. Isotropic and sad White, nothing else and nothing more. And how could I have failed to notice until just then such an achromatic expanse? Such a vapid emptiness that precluded all matter and meaning. But those days it was true that a great many critical things were hidden from my view by their very prevalence.
chapter 15
There was a little girl
Who had a little curl
Right in the middle of her forehead,
When she was good
She was very, very good,
But . . .
—Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Waiting for them to bring Raul Soldera down, and for Cymbeline to deign to return to the bench after the lunch break, I thought, surmised, conjectured, discovered, remembered, wished, guessed, intuited, researched, hoped, prayed, feared, speculated, theorized, recalled, learned, posited, and deduced that although Wilfred Benitez was born in the Bronx, as I said earlier, he actually lived most of his life in Puerto Rico.
His father Gregorio, or “Goyo”, was in agreement with Dick Van Patten that eight was enough. Enough children and probably not too difficult to get Clara Benitez to agree. Wilfred Benitez was eighth and last. Of Wilfred’s seven sibs, three were brothers and the three were Gregory, Alfonso, and Frankie. They weren’t just brothers either they were colleagues, because Goyo didn’t have sons, he had boxers. Boxers he managed and trained. His favorite boxer was his namesake Gregory. Gregory started boxing when he was eleven and if you’ve never heard of him, or of Wilfred’s other two brothers and their boxing careers, rest assured that, outside of this, you likely never will. Wilfred Benitez, about whom you will hear a lot, first began boxing, that is, first had his skull repositioned around his brain, when he was seven years old.
He did this in a ring located in the backyard of the Benitez home in San Just, Puerto Rico, a barrio hidden a couple miles east of the capital, San Juan. The Benitez family was split, some in San Just, some in New York, and it was Gregory Benitez’s misfortune to be in Puerto Rico, in that makeshift ring, in that sweltering backyard, across from his younger brother with the immense talent who repeatedly kicked his ass—a curious expression that rarely if ever involves an actual ass being actually kicked but which does seem to accurately reflect what it must feel like.
But Gregory was good too. Good enough that Goyo, whatever his level of ability at talent evaluation, could almost taste the distinct flavor of success nearby and so pursued it with his entire spirit. He threw himself into this. You’ve seen Goyos before. He was the mother teetering back and forth on her heels, at an angle from the stage, mouthing from memory all the lines her daughter will soon spit out to a receptive sea of docile heads wearing video cameras at the school play. He was that sagging father yelling at his son to pick up the back elbow as the little league ball approaches the vicinity of the plate, then reduc
ing that batter to tears when, after being verbally paralyzed into inaction, he looks at a called third strike. He was them in extremis. And what was the result of that? If all the Benitez boys were given the Goyo treatment why did Wilfred become who he did and the others just his brothers?
I think Wilfred Benitez liked that backyard ring more than his brothers. But he wasn’t better than them because he liked the ring more, rather he liked the ring more because he was better. The ring gave him something it couldn’t give the others. And not because of Goyo or because of Wilfred’s overwhelming effort. Not in this case.
The ability to hit and avoid being hit swirls around in the air, unattached and looking for a home. A little lands here, a little there. More here, less there, and an in-between amount elsewhere, all in an unpredictable dance of musical chairs. For whatever reason, a whole damn lot landed on Wilfred Benitez and beginning in 1965 you could see for yourself, and over the years many did, in that San Just yard. Those who saw, knew, and more gratifyingly Wilfred knew.
In the ring he knew what you were going to throw, from where and at what angle, seemingly before you did. A brilliant counterpuncher, he also knew you were going to pay for that punch. And after a while you knew it too and so became reluctant to expose yourself by throwing any more punches, a bad reluctance to have in boxing.
Outside of the ring he knew far less. When he wasn’t inhaling boxing, Wilfred exhaled it. School was only a mandatory respite from boxing so he stopped going after junior high. Later, multiple observers would comment on the childlike behavior that emanated from this unmistakably adult body and the difficulty he seemed to have emoting and processing complex thoughts. It was better those days when his mind matched his number and best when it was on that canvas, between those ropes, making instantaneous decisions that were never wrong.
Wilfred boxed every day. Every day of his life he threw punches. A left jab should shoot straight out from a rapid shoulder twitch. The straighter and stiffer the better. A good left hook, the kind any self-respecting Hispanic boxer aspires to throw, and the kind that serves as a perfectly appropriate counter to failed lead rights, ideally involves, whenever possible, a violently sudden hip twist. Uppercuts with each hand had to be learned in order to build the brilliant infighter. Overhand rights, right crosses, proper footwork, cutting off the ring and leaving it expansive. Fighting off the ropes, a future specialty, and in the lonely, contested middle. Every day for hour upon hour until the muscles remembered on their own. All this and the only real injury he received during this time occurred when he got his face tangled in barbed wire while chasing another boy near his house; the jagged scar raising from his nose to his jaw and always visible throughout his later career. He fought and learned: learned to fight. That was everything.
A Naked Singularity: A Novel Page 46
